Old PhysX fans will certanly recognize this name – Novodex Rocket (PhysX Rocket later on). This application combines two roles: demo physics playground (with large number of preliminarily created and configurable scenes, ability to change and visualize SDK parameters) and physics editor, which can export objects data to COLLADA or NxuStream.

PhysX Rocket was often used by Ageia to demonstrate SDK features and PPU computing capabilities in year 2005, and was included in SDK package as PhysX tool (till SDK 2.7.3.).

John Ratcliff, PhysX Rocket creator, has made a nice present recently – he revealed an updated legacy version of Rocket, which is based on latest PhysX SDK 2.8.3 and includes advanced UI options (unavailable in previous public versions), but is missing some vital demo scenes and object files. Fortunately, we were able to merge this updated Rocket with old one, from SDK 2.7.3 Tools – this means all demos like in regular Rocket, but SDK 2.8.3 solver and additional UI options from new one.

PhysX developers may be familiar with John Ratcliff – author of NxuStream (XML file format which is used to capture state of a PhysX SDK scene), Novodex/PhysX Rocket (physics demo application and editor) and other physics related researches.

PhysX2Obj – library that allows one to export a PhysX SDK scene as either a single Wavefront OBJ file in world space or a series of OBJ files in object space. Code has been compiled and tested with PhysX SDK 2.8.3 but should work with earlier versions of the SDK with little or no modification.

Tool with reverse purpose – Obj2PhysX - is going to be released shortly.

NvCoreDump is a windows 32 bit DLL which allows any PhysX 2.8.3 based project to perform an NxuStream XML compatible core dump in a single function call.

Rather than including all of the NxuStream source code in your application, instead you can simply demand load this tiny DLL and save it out. The value, purpose, and benefit is to take simply add the ability to export the contents of the current PhysX SDK in any application by simply adding this tiny code snippet and the DLL.

Group of enthusiasts is working on interesting project – classic Unreal 1 engine enhancement with real-time physics, based on PhysX SDK. Current version supports only primitives like boxes and spheres, convex meshes and several joint types, but result is already impressive:

User Containforum, known for his detailed video guide for Hybrid PhysX systems, has published another video – it describes somewhat tricky way to bypass Catalyst Control Center and extended display incompatibility, brought with recent 10.2 Catalyst drivers.

Moreover, after you’ll apply this fix you’ll will be able to use dedicated Nvidia GPU for PhysX – without necessity to extend display. Yep, mouse cursor won’t jump off the screen now.

Eurogamer.net website has published some very interesting materials, related to upcoming Metro 2033 title. Firstly, they revealed full specifications of proprietary technology behing Metro 2033, known as 4A Engine, which is called even by its developers “one of the most advanced engines on the planet”.

You can read full specs here, and we’ll quote only part related to engine physics system:

PhysX FluidMark is popular benchmarking application, that is often used to test stability and performance of GPU PhysX configurations. It performs PhysX SDK based SPH Fluids particle simulation, which can be calculated on CPU or compatible Nvidia GPU, however, only one CPU core can be used in first case.

After all those “Multi-Core CPU Support Is Disabled in PhysX” claims by AMD and following hype, JeGX (FluidMark developer) decided to leverage multi-threading capabilities of PhysX SDK and augment FluidMark with actual multi-core CPU support.